Earlier, the local administration bought a consignment from Crossword to distribute to school libraries. But the West Bengal government stopped further distribution after protests by Muslim groups, and intends removing it altogether.

Quick to jump onto the bandwagon, Hasan Ahmed Imran, general secretary of the Muslim Council of Bengal said, according to the report: "The sketch is in extremely bad taste and is blasphemous. The book should be immediately withdrawn from everywhere in the world and the guilty people must apologise."